Written for the Special Attack Prompt: Start Wearing Purple by Gogol Bordello
This chapter wedges itself in an awkward place timeline wise. It's technically set in Skin Deep—after Belle leaves, but before the Queen comes to see Rumpel. I'm going to venture out on my limb here and say a good many months pass between the two occasions.
Dirty, Young and Brilliant Clowns
Bravery is a vastly overrated concept.
Bravery took Belle to the side of the road and no further as a vast black carriage thundered up from nowhere behind her. Bravery stole a kiss from the beast. And Belle rather suspects that bravery is what spread her name from here to Highwater, coupled close beside the monster's whore.
Bravery gets people killed. But Belle is determined to see the world.
She keeps her head low as she moves through this newest bravery—a shepherds' village, thick with moving wooly boulders and the cloying stench of sheep through every house and thatch.
Three cities back, the whisper of a wakened mob taught her not to pay for supper with measured strings of gold, to look no man in the eyes, and speak to women only in voices loud enough to be overheard. So today, Belle walks with purpose, eyes the ground and the flash of her scuffed shoes. She has little enough coin to her name—proper coin, anyway. Today will be the first of many days she goes hungry.
Two towns ago, she learned to spatter her cloak with mud and fray the hems with sharpened stones. Travelers with nice things must wear their nice things worn. So today, Belle is barely noticed. Any shine from silver threads embroidered through her cloak have long since tarnished in the rain. The delicate tips of leaves have been plucked ragged by broken fingernails. And though she finds quite the crowd amassed and buzzing in this shepherds' village, but the crowd does not find her.
Belle flinches away to the edges of the street. She has found strangers are expected to in places such as these. As she nears the biggest building this ditch-water little place can boast, the crowd grows thicker, and the sound of raging drunks strikes her in the breastbone as terrifying and utterly familiar.
"You might just as well say I go marauding through the countryside snapping up dragons for my supper!" a young man's voice protests over the swell and buzz of the crowd. "It's utterly ridiculous, is what it is. I'm on my way out, thank you very much."
Threats follow from the crowd. Someone calls for a witch-tester, another for weaponry. Belle has learned, from several similar places, that most of the assembled here will not act.
But one will—one always will—and he is the spark that will set the powder keg alight.
"No, sir, I do not," Belle hears the young man bawling protests again and thinks he has a hawker's voice. "If you must know, I was born in a well under very auspicious and uplifting circumstances, and furthermore, I subsist entirely on treacle. I wouldn't touch your finest cuts, let alone your infant, thank you very much. Now, do be a lamb and let me pass."
The crowd rears back the moment the young man shoves forward off the stoop of the inn and Belle catches sight of him. He cannot be much older than her, though he is dressed entirely in several different shades of purple, right up to his enormous top hat. A showman's suit, she thinks. A magician, or a trickster. Belle can tell by the cant of his hands and fingers as he wades between the assembled people that pockets are not safe from him.
But coming off the stoop was a disastrous idea. He has lost his only means of escape; the crowd circles around to close behind him. And finally, the one—the one that always will—opens his idiot mouth.
"He's one of them imps, I'll bet!"
And several others draw their knives.
He is probably not a very nice young man, Belle thinks. And bravery is a vastly overrated concept.
But still, she cannot help but to be brave.
"Look here!" she shouts. "You leave that man alone!"
"Stay out of this, stranger!" someone barks. Then another, as the powder-keg of frightened idiots ignites, "I bet she's with him! His familiar!"
"Oh, that's just ridiculous. I'm a person, I can't be anyone's familiar." Belle glowers at the crowd, her hands on her hips, though her heart thunders in her throat. She stares them down, and more and more, their attention turns to her. "Would you listen to yourselves? You're the ones with threats and knives, not I. Pray tell, how am I the monster?"
The purple-hatted man ducks his head. The hat comes off and so she loses sight of him, but she thinks she sees him slip out from under the backs and elbows of the crowd.
"She could be a witch!" someone snarls.
Belle finds the speaker. The accusation comes from a small enough man—the sort that, on his own, would never lift his eyes from his own shoes—and if Belle has learned anything from her days with Rumpelstiltskin, she's learned bluff and showmanship. She borrows a little something now from him, and a little something more from the stern-faced crow who schooled her in her younger days.
"I came to bless your fallow fields. Gift your sheep with healthy twins. Perhaps witness the birth of a hero and give her a gift to help her on her way. But you—" Belle folds the last two fingers of her right hand and points at her accuser, gathering what slender silvered lines of magic from the air she knows that she can hold. "You have hindered my apprentice and insulted my name—and for that, you will pay."
Catching the tail end of the purple-hatted man quite clearly dart into a muck-puddled alleyway some distance away, Belle steels her shoulders, levels her hand…
And lets the magic go.
Light and color and dazzling heat explode in the thick of the crowd, her spell somewhere off its mark. Several faces turn a variety of colors—puce and taupe and sea-foam green. One burly man turns a remarkable sky blue.
And this, she thinks, is why bravery is overrated.
She'd only been expecting smoke.
Still, Belle keeps her shoulders tight and firmly back, stands her ground on the opposite side of the street and crosses her arms like iron before her chest. "There."
"There?" someone wails. "What did you do?"
"Isn't it obvious? I changed the color of your face."
"We've been cursed!"
"Yes," she nods. "A lovely green. And several delightful shades of blue. Perhaps next time, you'll be more favorable towards oddly colored strangers. Be thankful I did you no worse."
And steeling herself to run at the first noise of dissent behind her, Belle turns and continues on her way.
The crowd doesn't move. Perhaps they are afraid of her. Perhaps she's cursed them somehow, and they cannot.
Belle does not turn around. She does not stop to look. Perhaps if she had, she might have seen a slender man in dragon leather watching her go with a wicked appraiser's grin. But Belle does not. She barely breathes. She counts her steps to keep her calm, does not hurry—dear gods, she cannot appear to hurry—and disappears into the trees.
And no one follows.
Not one.
Well, technically.
Because as she staggers behind a briar bush and drops shaking to the ground with her head between her knees to breathe, she finds herself sitting suddenly beside her purple-hatted man. He has a friendly face she finds she trusts and gray eyes that smile, even though his hand shakes as he offers her his flask.
"Have some wine," he says, pressing it into her hands.
Belle steadies her breathing, peers inside the tiny metal can. "There isn't any."
"Ah well," he sighs and shrugs. Perhaps it is the bravery, but Belle finds she must stifle a giggle into her sleeve. The man smiles at her, and his wide, doggish face is both mischievous and kind. "What's your name?"
That sobers her. She peers through the briars and the brush, remembers to strain her ears for the sound of approaching feet.
"I don't think I should say," she ventures at last.
Her new friend nods, scrunches up his nose and lifts a shoulder. "Me either."
And because bravery is a vastly overrated, when shortly thereafter they rise and walk and walk and hours of conversation later find themselves at a fork in the road, Belle nods a fond goodbye to her be-hatted friend and chooses the opposite path.
It is, apparently, the short road to the same village.
Belle arrives first. She scrubs clothing for her supper—life is not so very different outside the Dark Castle after all. And how strange it is, she thinks with her head over yet another steaming tub, that of all things, this should be the skill for survival that Rumpelstiltskin teaches her.
In any case, the people in the village do not ask questions, and the scarred, cheerful old woman that hires her is kind. Belle spends a long night stirring various cauldrons of muddied clothing, the feeling of amused and lingering eyes forever burning the back of her neck. But no one asks her name and Belle pretends she is unable to speak, so she goes to bed happy, unmolested, a full stomach and happily warm.
It all goes to hell the next morning, of course.
As she beats the dust from a rug outside the inn, a wee little girl comes toddling to her with a badly scraped knee. The child sobs into her arms and Belle doesn't think. She should think. But she touches her fingers to her lips instead, then to the place above the baby's hurt, and the sore spot disappears.
Apparently, this village has had recent trouble with a changeling. The people here bear no tolerance for even small, tame magics now, and Belle does not realize soon enough. Before she understands what is going on, she's penned in by yet another bloody crowd calling her a monster's whore.
Belle watches them circle, her back to the trees and her meager bag of belongings still waiting at the foot of a bed inside. She considers calling Rumpelstiltskin. She has felt eyes on her shoulders often enough to believe that he would hear her. But while bravery is overrated, like it or not, bravery is Belle's nature. She steels jaw and lifts her head, means to confront them with the insanity of their own accusations, but when she opens her mouth to speak, she is interrupted.
"Mary Ann? Mary Ann, are you putting on a show for these good people without me?"
A violently purple top-hat bobs over the head of the crowd, parting people like an unhappy sea.
"Now you know that goes against our contract, Mary Ann, and I absolutely will not have my apprentice upstaging me!"
And suddenly, her hatted friend is at the forefront of the crowd. He wears a pair of round, wire-rimmed spectacles today. Fire dances along the seams of his sleeves. He seems not to notice either, mopping at his brow with great, ridiculous flaps of a frilly pink handkerchief. Belle's heart flutters in her throat like bird's wings, but she has sold herself to an imp of a man over her father's own war-table. She can certainly handle this.
Belle smiles. She has had a lifetime of smiling in rooms full of people she hates, and rolling with the punches is new, but she has walked on her own feet through seven sullen and unfriendly towns. She has learned to make do.
She says, "Well, sir, I couldn't wait for you all day. When I left, you still hadn't even picked your name!"
Her hatted friend snaps his handkerchief at her. It turns into a red-breasted hummingbird and darts away.
"Crumbs in the works, m'dear. Nothing a little butter didn't fix."
"Oh?" she puts a hand on her hip, taps a muddied silver foot. "Well, have you at least picked a name?"
"Today," he says, and bows with a flourish, "You may call me Hatter."
The uneasy crowd begins to settle. She hears them whispering, "Performers?" Magic, it seems, is acceptable, as long as it's accompanied by a hawker's barking tones. Belle's smile grows a little less taut. She eases, somewhat.
"I may," she agrees. "But would you like me to?"
And though Hatter's silver eyes show worry, he grins, and it suits him. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" he demands, and tosses her a spool of golden thread, lifted from her own pocket the day before.
Belle catches it, arches him a brow.
"Because their notes are both very flat, I should think," she says, and tosses it back. It changes, midair, into a searing red apple.
And they perform.
Bravery is overrated, but Belle plays at bravery well. Her heart flutters and jumps in her throat with every murmur of the crowd, but she smiles and smiles until she thinks her face might break—until the smile seeps down and somehow, bizarrely, she begins to enjoy it.
She uses the flashiest spells she knows, which aren't many. Cleaning the Dark Castle wasn't precisely an apprenticeship, and the Dark One's many books weren't written with princesses in mind. But the crowd doesn't know magic, and while she doesn't know much, anything with a bit of smoke or sparkle suits to amuse.
Hatter juggles a house of cards he builds in midair. Belle accompanies each new addition with a flash of smoke and a jangle of bells.
When the house of cards tumbles, she lights them aflame. They burn into green glittered ash long before they hit the ground.
She sends up a column of raging aubergine clouds. Hatter pulls a rabbit from his hat.
It's the same spell, more or less, again and again. Only the color changes. But if there's one thing Belle has mastered working for the dreaded Rumpelstiltskin, it's turning pink underthings back to white again. The crowd doesn't notice. Children trickle from between house and out of fields to watch them, and soon they are surrounded by a sea of tiny, eager eyes.
Belle grins at Hatter—we're safe as houses now.
He twists his fingers—takes two for luck—and grins right back.
When a dormouse pushes open the uppermost part of Hatter's overlarge top hat, even Belle cannot help but clap. Her eyes are on Hatter, and his on hers. Neither spots the middling sort of man in dragon leather, standing beneath the dusty shade of a blooming cherry tree.
The poor dormouse blinks blearily out into the crowd, hiccups, and begins to sing.
"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat. How I wonder what you're at."
The thing floats higher with every rising note, soaring up and up as gently as a wisp of steam. Belle finds Hatter's eyes. He glances up once, cocks an eyebrow—a challenge.
"Up above the world so high. Like a tea tray in the sky—"
Without stopping to think or try to reason, Belle concentrates and flicks her fingers at the dormouse. Hatter catches the silver platter the creature becomes as it drops from the air, produces it to the crowd with a flourish and a bow.
Belle laughs. "I'm getting better, Hatter," she says.
She does not see the eyes of the impish man beneath the tree fix on her, deep lines bracketing his brow and mouth.
Hatter shrugs, hides a smile. "I've taught you well."
He drops the tea tray in midair. Belle seizes it with a tendril of borrowed sky, forces it to hang there. She catches Hatter's eyes flicker once in surprise, but the crowd does not. They see only the teakettle he produces from the depths of one sleeve.
Belle grins. Crouching, she plucks a dandelion from the sparse scattering of grass beneath her feet, offers it to Hatter, then shakes her head. "Oh no, no. That's not right, is it?"
She gives her hand a little shake—half for showmanship, half to hide her tremors—and produces a tiny chipped teacup, barely large enough to fill her palm.
And her eyes are on Hatter, so she does not see the impish man beneath the blooming cherry tree dig a fist into his stomach as though he hurts there, as though he has been struck, or feels he might unexpectedly pull apart at the seams.
Hatter eyes her cup and snorts. "Ostentatious, don't you think? So large. Ah well, if there's no room, move down. That's what my mother always said."
Shrugging, he sets his kettle down on the floating tea tray, pulls off his hat. Reaching inside, he removes another teacup big enough to call itself a butter dish.
"Here you are, m'dear. Clean cup and all that."
"Why thank you, sir." She takes the massive cup and waits politely as he fills it up with tea, then dribbles a few last drops his tiny chipped cup, and kisses the corner of his glass to hers.
"To good health," she says. Hatter hums his agreement and takes a dainty sip.
A moment later, he glares at the crowd over his silly, round glasses and the ridiculously tiny rim.
"Well?" he snaps. "Show's over. Go on!" And flaps a hand.
Belle swallows, so grateful for the weight of this massive, ridiculous vessel to steady her shaking hands. She must ignore the crowd; it is vital they maintain the act and haughty expectation. So she takes a sip from her tea to hide her face and misses entirely the man beneath the blooming cherry tree, as his color changes with his mood—from sunny gold to bitter, tarnished copper.
And beyond her cup, the crowd actually begins to disperse.
Hatter murmurs, "Oh, I nearly forgot. Sugar?" and pulls several slightly linty cubes from behind her ear. He offers her a smile, something sheepish and scared and brave and relieved.
"No, thank you," she says, feeling very much the same. "There's already honey in the tea."
"Ah, yes. Well. Always good to come prepared."
They ignore the world together, speak of the weather instead, and a horse in the next town that threw a shoe. Belle mentions the dormouse's wife, "Won't she be pleased with all this nice fine silver?"
"Oh, yes," Hatter says. "To hear her tell it, he always was a penniless lay-about. This should do her some good, hmm?"
And they keep on, battering at this and that, at shoes and ships and sealing wax. And Belle does not see the man beneath the tree memorizing the light in her eyes, the bow of her smile and the breadth of her hands. She does not see his shoulders sag and turn away. She does not see the accusation in his eyes, directed inward. She does not see his shattered hope or his despair.
She sees Hatter. Only Hatter. And they talk of many things, until the crowd tires of their ridiculous new mundanity and fragments back to daily tasks again.
At last, Belle feels able to say, "Thank you."
And Hatter grins. It lights up his whole face until his gray eyes sparkle like the rarest gems. He reminds her of a childhood playmate—Andy Lee—all hope and mischief and quick, dirty hands.
"Whatever for, my Mary Ann?"
And Belle sees in his eyes that her hatted friend is not an especially trustworthy man. She sees that he is running from something, just as she is. She sees a tendril of the future, drifting down from the vast sunlit sky and Belle knows that their friendship will be long and fast and dark, joyous and hurtful and utterly exceptional. She sees that when the end of the world comes, they will meet it holding hands and emerge alive, together, on the other side.
But it is, perhaps, more important what she does not see.
One lonely impish man standing, shoulders bent, beneath a dying cherry tree.